About a year ago I stopped making regular updates to this blog to concentrate on my Namnesia Antidote blog. While that is an ongoing effort, I am starting what should be about a year long effort to revitalize the concept of a "This Day in History" blog. I have decided to leave this blog intact and as-is, using a new "This Day in History 2.0" blog for my expanded and full version. Please feel free to email with your ideas. The two tables below should allow you to find a posting for the "Day in History" you wish to research.

Monday, November 19, 2007

November 19......

November 19 is the 323rd (324th in leap years) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 42 days remaining in the year on this date.

Best Liberal Quote of the Day: On Love "We are shaped and guided by what we love." — Johann von Goethe

Stupidest and/or Scariest Quote from the Right for the Day: On A Balanced Budget or The Dive to Red Ink "Isn't it time we hold Congress accountable for how much they spend—and for what? The American people demand responsibility from Congress. The spending madness must stop. Our Contract with America begins with fiscal responsibility. Just as every American sits at the kitchen table and balances his or her budget, Congress must begin balancing our nation's budget—now. That's why in the first hundered days of a Republicn House we will vote on the Fiscal Responsibility Act . . ." — Contract with America, etc. NY: Times Books, 1994, p. 23.

Dumbest Thing Said for the Day: From Politics "Voters quickly forget what a man says." — Following the Watergate scandal, the name Richard Nixon became almost synonymous with government corruption. We discovered that not only was Nixon corrupt, but he also had a flair for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time—with a tape recorder running. Tricky Dick is Hall of Shame Member # 4.

{Disclaimer: I have attempted to give credit to the many different sources that I get entries. Any failure to do so is unintentional. Any statement enclosed by brackets like these are the opinion of the blogger, A Proud Liberal.}

NASA ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY

Aurora in the Distance

Credit & Copyright: Lance McVayClick picture to go to NASA APOD site for full explanation

TEXT OF GETTYSBURG ADDRESS IN THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL THAT WAS DELIVERED ON THIS DATE IN 1863

EVENTS

● 1493 - Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).

● 1792 - French revolutionary convention offers aid to all those wishing to overthrow their government.

● 1794 - The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to clear up some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.

● 1797 - Birth of Isabella Baumfree, New York. Freed in 1827 by the New York State Emancipation Act. After a divine revelation in 1843, changed her name to Sojouner Truth and begins speaking for emancipation of African-Americans and woman's rights.

● 1812 - Third U.S. attempt to invade Canada during War of 1812 collapses. American troops refuse to leave New York State and force Gen. Henry Dearborn to return them to Pittsburgh.

● 1816 - Warsaw University is established.

● 1847 - The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railway, is opened.

● 1850 - Alfred Lord Tennyson becomes Poet Laureate, a position he held until his death in 1892.

● 1862 - Birth of Liard-Courtois (Auguste Courtois), Calais, France. Militant labor and anarchist speaker. Sentenced to two years prison and a strong fine, for a lecture tour in 1891 advocating the general strike. Formed the anarchist group "La Revanche Fourmisienne," forced into exile in Belgium and England. Returned to France, got five years in prison. In 1914 he aligns with Jean Grave and the pro-war "Proclamation of the Sixteen."

● 1863 - At the close of a dedication ceremony for a cemetery for Union army dead at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Abraham Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address, commonly considered one of the finest speeches ever uttered by an American politician due to its eloquence and brevity.

Here is the text of the speech in its entirety:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

● 1874 - William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, Grand Sachem of New York City's Tammany Hall, convicted of 204 counts of fraud. Estimates of sum Tweed swindled from City Treasury range up to $200 million.

● 1881 - A meteorite lands near the village of Großliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.

● 1900 - Birth of Anna Seghers, German novelist, essayist, short story writer, radical who gained international fame. Her major themes were social injustice and the political upheavals of modern age.

● 1903 - Carrie Nation attempts to address Senate.

● 1915 - Singer and IWW labor organizer Joe Hill executed by firing squad by state of Utah. Hill was convicted of killing a grocer and his son, even though the bullets were not from Hill's revolver and no one identified him as the murderer. Hill became a martyr upon his execution. Efforts by Pres. Woodrow Wilson, the government of Sweden, and many prominent Americans to get him a new trial had failed.

● 1916 - Samuel Goldfish (later renamed Samuel Goldwyn) and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures (the company later became one of the most successful independent filmmakers).

● 1924 - In Los Angeles, California, famous silent film director Thomas Ince ("The Father of the Western") dies of a heart attack in his bed (beliefs still persist that he was murdered).

● 1936 - Anarchist leader Durruti is mortally wounded under uncertain circumstances while helping to defend Madrid against Franco's fascist army in the Spanish Civil War.

● 1941 - World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.

● 1942 - World War II: Battle of Stalingrad - Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.

● 1944 - World War II: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.

● 1954 - Sammy Davis, Jr., loses his left eye in an automobile accident in San Bernardino, California.

● 1955 - National Review publishes its first issue.

● 1959 - Ford, following the advice of consumers, cancels the Edsel.

● 1961 - Michael Rockefeller, son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, disappears in the jungles near Atsj, Papua New Guinea.

● 1965 - Pop Tarts pastries created.

● 1967 - The Establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.

● 1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

● 1969 - In an effort to undercut growing opposition to the Vietnam War, Congress passes random selection of draftees thru lottery, and permits first calling of 19-year-olds and expired college deferments, and call-up by birthday.

● 1976 - Jaime Ornelas Camacho takes office as the first President of the Regional Government of Madeira, Portugal.

● 1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he meets with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.

● 1979 - Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.

● 1984 - A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.

● 1985 - Cold War: In Geneva, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

● 1985 - Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion verdict against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in U.S. history, stemming from Texaco's establishing a signed contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.

● 1990 - Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It’s True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.

● 1994 - In Britain, the first National Lottery draw was held. A £1 ticket gives a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.

● 1996 - Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire.

● 1996 - The case of the Port Arthur massacre comes to trial.

● 1997 - In Des Moines, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive. They would go on to become the first set of septuplets to survive infancy, with all seven alive in 2007.

● 1997 - Weeks of protest of up to 250,000 against electoral fraud by Slobodan Milosevic's government. Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

● 1998 - Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against US President Bill Clinton.

● 1998 - The first stage of a troop withdrawal from the West Bank approved by Israel. It won't last.

● 1999 - In Istanbul, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ends a two-day summit by calling for a political settlement in Chechnya and adopting a Charter for European Security.

● 2004 - John Robert Vane, British pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1927)

● 2005 - Erik Balling, Danish TV and film director (b. 1924)

HOLIDAYS AND OBSERVANCES

● Roman Catholic:● St. Atto● St. Azas and Companions● St. Barlaam● St. Crispin● St. Ermenberga● St. Faustus● St. James of Sasseau● St. Maximus● St. Mechtildis of Helfta● St. Medana● St. Nerses the Great● Sts. Severinus, Exuperius, & Felician

● Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar for November 6 (Civil Date: November 19)● St. Paul the Confessor, Archbishop of Constantinople St. Barlaam, abbot of Chutin (Novgorod).● St. Luke, monk of Sicily.● Martyrs Tecusa, Alexandra, Claudia, Matrona, Polactia, Euphrosyne, and Athanasia of Ancyra.● St. Luke, steward of the Kiev Caves.● Repose of St. Herman (Germanus), Archbishop of Kazan.● St. Barlaam of Keret Lake.● Synaxis of New Martyr of Sarov: Anatole, Basil, Hierotheus, Isaac and Rufinus.● New Martyr Gregory the Cross bearer (1936).

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Life long Liberal. Actually saw JFK on campaign trail. Defining moment of my life was the assassination of JFK. First presidential election I participated in was knocking on doors for McGovern, have been tilting at windmills ever since.